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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26257777">Signals</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Sank/pseuds/Beatrice_Sank'>Beatrice_Sank</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Twin Peaks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Albert can't catch a break, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Hiking, Investigations, M/M, Or: the unending search for one Dale Cooper, Texting, but writing those two together turned potentially shippy against my will, it was an accident and I'm sorry, neither can Diane, ominous signs, this one could be almost be called 'No Reception in Twin Peaks'</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 03:53:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,455</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26257777</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Sank/pseuds/Beatrice_Sank</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A yearly visit to Twin Peaks. In the process of looking for Cooper, Albert may have accidentally made a friend - not without resistance. Meanwhile, in the background, Diane worries. There are many ways to get lost into town. And this time, they might have actually find something. </p><p>“Any progress?”<br/>It’s been five years – not an anniversary, though, nothing to celebrate – and by now he’s almost convinced Harry would mostly like to hear about his life, about those things one is supposed to do outside of work, like going out with friends and comparing jazz clubs on Saturday nights, holidays spent visiting Californian vineyards, and other oddities he can’t even begin to imagine. What makes it worse, even if that question only brings to mind many failed interrogations of people who vaguely looked like Cooper, and way too much alcohol with Diane at their usual bar, is that he’s equally curious about what Harry does with his time."</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Albert Rosenfield &amp; Diane Evans &amp; Harry Truman, Albert Rosenfield &amp; Harry Truman, Albert Rosenfield/Harry Truman (could be read both ways honestly), Dale Cooper &amp; Albert Rosenfield, Diane Evans &amp; Albert Rosenfield (Twin Peaks), probably Albert/Cooper too if you squint though it's mostly subtext</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Signals</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ketterle">ketterle</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Happy Wonderful x Strange, ketterle!<br/>As you'll see, I've mixed some of your prompts together, hope it's okay!<br/>This is set five years after Cooper's disappearance, so I imagine it to be close to Mr C.'s attacking Diane, for some (grim) context.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>His tea is lukewarm and too weak, like every time they are together, though this is not an anniversary. It’s as if Harry knew if he ever dared make it taste like anything, it would suddenly be too much for him, force him to acknowledge what they are doing, what they are drinking, and where – Harry’s wooden chair, probably handmade and varnished by some local ding-dong with wind-chimes hanging right behind the door of his shop, “charming guy, you should see his leather work” – and Christ, he should try to relax.</p><p>The caffeine in that tea is close to non-existent, which he supposes is part of Harry’s offering, but to call it deliberate would paint the man as a seasoned strategist the likes of Windom Earle could only ever dream to be. The other possibility, of course, is to see it as a simple act of kindness, a sign Harry understands how he gets when he visits, and that is not an idea he can afford to dwell upon, because the slight tremor it would cause in his hands would make him spill his drink – as always. Whatever the answer, he’s drinking from a ‘Boss of the Year’ mug shaped as a moose which, he supposes, should indicate a tone.</p><p>Diane would have a field day. Except Diane never does.</p><p>“So,” Harry finally says, leaning forward with perhaps a bit of concern at his prolonged silence, “how are things going in Philadelphia?”</p><p>And then, almost out of a sense of obligation, though he knows perfectly well what the answer will be:</p><p>“Any progress?”</p><p>It’s been five years – not an anniversary, though, nothing to celebrate – and by now he’s almost convinced Harry would mostly like to hear about his life, about those things one is supposed to do outside of work, like going out with friends and comparing jazz clubs on Saturday nights, holidays spent visiting Californian vineyards, and other oddities he can’t even begin to imagine. What makes it worse, even if that question only brings to mind many failed interrogations of people who vaguely looked like Cooper, and way too much alcohol with Diane at their usual bar, is that he’s equally curious about what Harry does with his time. He would even listen to an hour-long explanation about the difficulties of pole fishing in the Snoqualmie. And frankly, that thought terrifies him.</p><p>“Nothing that would deserve that name, no. We got a close match for fingerprints on a corpse in Florida, of all hellish places. But the coroner’s IQ had nothing on that of most cellular life forms, and the John Doe, even less brain that he did. I wish we could have spared ourselves the trip.”</p><p>Gordon had wanted to buy a palm tree shirt. He still had nightmares about that.</p><p>Harry hums in compassion, and they fall in a more companionable silence. He lets his eyes wander for a bit in the motives of his flannel shirt, from one brownish square to the to the other as if the pattern was a labyrinth with a hidden exit. Another proof that Harry isn’t on duty today, no matter what he would like to believe. He feels so out of place in the cabin, with his damnable work suit, briefcase and everything, like he’s mentally reporting on the number of guns in the room and the Bureau is paying for his expense account.</p><p>Every year he has the debate with himself, half-naked and sorry before his wardrobe’s mirror, feeling this sort of charade should be reserved for his getaways to nowhere with Gordon, the sort of grim motel escape-game that happens whenever news of a black-haired white man reach the boss’s hearing aids. But wearing even a leisure shirt or, God forbids, a sweater, in front of Harry when he looks like this, like he’s on holiday and waiting for him to say something scathing about the quality of his tea, is beyond him.</p><p>‘Go half-naked, then,’ his inner Diane always comments. ‘It would achieve about as much’.</p><p>And so he always enters Twin Peaks looking like a firm lawyer with an upcoming ulcer.</p><p>His phone, which he let on the bookshelf next to his chair, right in front a copy of <em>The Call of the Wild</em> – a choice that made him inwardly roll his eyes at himself – suddenly lights up. From his seat, he can read the message displaying, as well as the name of the sender, not that he’s altogether surprised:</p><p>
  <em>Are you there yet?</em>
</p><p>*</p><p>Diane was the first person he knows to get herself a cell phone – forced Gordon to buy her one. She said the way he managed the department’s finances was worthy of a trial, and that they should try to be at the cutting edge of something, for once. Then he found himself with a phone too, courtesy of the Bureau, even before Gordon got his hands on one: they had a few months of restful exclusivity during which they mostly synchronized by texts to avoid him whenever they could. She was always exceptionally good with technology, quick to adapt, and typed her messages in full, while he was still painfully slow – not that he was letting anyone know about it. He tried to assume the delay in his answers made him sound detached, and hid the thing under his desk whenever he had to use it.</p><p>“You’re going back there again,” she had stated, more than asked, the previous day, critically eyeing the suitcase he brought with him to work. It was no great mystery, Albert never went on anything close to a holiday: he simply took a few days off once a year, and went to Twin Peaks.</p><p>Diane, on the other hand, usually disappeared for two months on some impossible island or other, where she lived lavishly, according to the few photographs he could get a glimpse of on the rare occasions she let him inside her apartment. She never said a word about what she did there (though he sometimes received sarcastic postcards), but he liked to think about her that way, slowly melting under the sun.</p><p> </p><p>“Is he really that hot? You know I must be told, I only got audio-description here. Though I suppose Dale sounded quite enthralled.”</p><p>Her tone is bitter, but she’s the only one who’s able to talk about Cooper this way. He knows he never could. More than that, it affects him whenever she does it, as if her willingness to mention him was like a thump at his armor.</p><p>She seems to consider the hypothesis for a second and adds:</p><p>“No, scratch that, it’s been – how many years? Nobody’s that hot.”</p><p>The dismissive look on her face is that of someone who thinks <em>she</em> certainly is that hot, but the rarity of such a gift among her fellow humans must be accepted with philosophy and an ounce of pity.</p><p>“Look at me – I really liked that guy at reception, and you don’t see me going on fourth date with him, because I, unlike some people, know when to be sensible.”</p><p>He gives her a pointed look, knowing better than to question the sensibility of someone who chose to dress herself in orange spandex with assorted pink fur bracelets. No one, not even him, got to doubt Diane’s summer looks. That was something for the Jeffries days, and Jeffries was long gone.</p><p>“It’s not sensible, it’s a system. You never go on fourth dates. On a related note, I would appreciate you warn the suckers beforehand.”</p><p>Not two weeks ago, he had seen a clueless tech rando interrupt Gordon’s smoking break to ask if he knew how he could contact Diane in Guam. Luckily, his hearings aids had been off. She always seemed to find some fun in telling her lovers she had been transferred to absurd destinations, but the man had looked quite desperate.</p><p>“I suppose I could – I don’t know why I bother,” she reclined in her seat and begins to fiddle with a paperclip. “No one ever seems to find this office anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gordon had the plans redacted. You’re about my only visitor.”</p><p>Every year, when he goes away, she gets like this. Ask him what he’s taking with him, and what he thinks of Harry Truman now, if he plans on seeing other people there, if he <em>likes</em> it there, voice more acidic than ever. Sometimes, but rarely, when she’s really drunk or really tired, she reminds him offhandedly that they are the only two left, only the two of them because Gordon certainly doesn’t count. ‘And who would pay for the drinks’, she says, and toasts to Blue Rose.</p><p>“It’s not an anniversary,” he can only say.</p><p>She suddenly leans forwards and points at him with the straight wire she’s turned her paperclip into, her face so serious he wants to take a step back.</p><p>“I could drive into that town. I could leave this office, if I wanted to.”</p><p>Somehow he gets the impression she’s mostly trying to convince herself.</p><p>*</p><p>Harry eyes his phone with curiosity, and he realizes he’s been staring at the message. Out of a strange sense of embarrassment, he decides not to answer right away, and puts it back on the shelve.</p><p>“Sorry,” he comments. “Work.”</p><p>“I can imagine. Although I have to say, I don’t know how you manage with those,” he nods at the Nokia with a sense of bewilderment. “It’s hard enough to talk with people these days, I wouldn’t want to have to resort to such means. And I can only imagine what Lucy would think of it.”</p><p>Harry doesn’t like calling, but he still does, from time to time, as if he was scared Albert wouldn’t – which is a ridiculous fear, if anything Albert often have to talk himself out of composing his number when he has no update on Cooper to give, only an urge to ask Harry if he has an opinion on Ellington’s <em>Diminuendo in Blue</em>, or if he thinks one can go missing for this long a time without being lost forever.</p><p>“What happened to small town volubility and easy human contact?”</p><p>Harry sighs, and he knows he’s cursing himself. There’s a reason they only have that travesty of tea together: Harry stopped drinking years ago, and he remembers Cooper’s ridiculous speeches too well to indulge in the local coffee without resenting its bitter aftertaste. It’s probably sane to have developed a tradition of sorts that doesn’t involve any of the town’s hallmarks, but he can’t help feeling he’s being unfair, as he can’t help the fact he probably likes Harry now, likes him despite his flannel shirt and easy smile and honest eyes.</p><p>The screen of the phone lights up again, but he doesn’t notice it.</p><p>“Ah. Well it seems people don’t always speak their mind as freely as you do, small town or not. You were pretty vocal on the subject when you first came here, if I remember correctly.”</p><p>With that, he smiles to him, warmly, as if to say he’s come to appreciate the degree of truth in his insults, and Albert has to wonder if that isn’t after all the saddest thing that happened to him. Pressing his lips together briefly, he holds on to the fact his tea is weak, and won’t leave a trace on his palate. There are moments, he has to admit, when he looks at Harry and wonder if that is what Cooper felt.</p><p>“I was only saying if more people embraced that philosophy, we would get more work done. I find politeness is often a smoke screen. Investigating here was a nightmare because of that. Some random guy even punched me,” he tells him.</p><p>But of course he’s nothing like Cooper, he’s never been, and most things in his life work to remind him he never will be. To his credit, Harry’s never tried to turn him into someone he’s not.</p><p>“I’m sure he had his reasons,” he states, looking at the bottom of his cup, amused.</p><p>“They always do, trust me. That coroner in Miami almost cost me a tooth. But I doubt you ever get punched in the line of duty around here, except maybe in the midst of a fight for the biggest trout.”</p><p>He’s noticed over the years it always takes him a couple of hours to drop his outer coat of bitterness when he comes to Twin Peaks. Every time it’s like he’s inheriting the anger of the place. He wishes he could force it to speak, take each charming line out of its quiet, respectable facade, and make them spell out for him what it has done with his friend. Every time he drives past the town’s sign, he can’t help but wonder if somewhere in those numbers there’s one Dale Cooper.</p><p>All in all, it’s a miracle Harry can still stand him after so many years.</p><p>“Truth to be told, I almost wish I could get a stronger reaction out of people: it’s like I told you, it’s getting harder and harder to make them speak about the case. No one wants to hear about Laura Palmer anymore – and Coop… I don’t know, it’s like the original sin, the last persons I tried to question almost seemed to believe he was responsible for the rise in drug dealings we got around here after he disappeared. People forget. And I’ve heard so much nonsense – too many of them are just scared they will lose their job, with the mill closing. Catherine Martell even accused me of wanting to twist the knife in the wound by asking questions about what happened then. I wish her husband was still alive – I have a feeling he would have been interested in Glastonbury Grove. She only told me to let go of it.”</p><p>They stare at each other for a moment.</p><p>“No new lead, then? I won’t say I’m surprised. It’s getting less and less likely that anyone can tell us anything useful.”</p><p>Harry shakes his head:</p><p>“It’s not only that. I really believe we could still find… What I mean is, I used to think I knew these people. But to see them so willing to forget about everything that happened… I never expected that. I thought they would rise to the occasion, that we would find a way to go out of it together.”</p><p>In the silence that follows, his phone flashes again, and though he gives Harry an apologetic look, he’s relieved to have an excuse not to answer. He’s probably not the best person to offer support, since he’s been free of such illusions for longer than he cares to remember. At least when they lost their first agent, he never for one moment believed it would bring them closer.</p><p>Turning his attention to the screen, he finds he’s missed several messages.</p><p>
  <em>You must be, I’ve checked the flight schedule.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Albert. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Are you with him? Is that why you’re ignoring me? </em>
</p><p>As fast as he can (which is still rather slow – he was never as ready as her to keep up with the times), he types:</p><p>
  <em>Sory, no receptin her</em>
</p><p>“Got to answer this, or the Bureau will send helicopters to search for their least useful ME. They’re not really used to see me go.”</p><p>Harry manages to chuckles, as another message comes in.</p><p>
  <em>You think yourself hilarious, I’m sure.</em>
</p><p>It seems they have successfully avoided the subject of how Harry feels, which he would normally congratulate himself upon. Today, though, it only tastes as sour as Diane’s mood.</p><p>“By the way, how was your trip? We had trouble lately around the town’s entrance, kids keep messing with the sign. You haven’t seen anything special?”</p><p>*</p><p>It’s the strangest thing.</p><p>At the end of their uneasy conversation, Diane had told him, rearranging files on her desk with too much vehemence:</p><p>“Fine. Keep an eye on your phone. And don’t be stupid. Traffic will be hell in half an hour.”</p><p>And sure enough, by the time he had left, you couldn’t get a car to move in Philly’s streets.</p><p>Which is why he was so shocked when a bird went and seemingly decided to kill itself by plowing into his windshield, when he was merely changing to second gear. It happened so suddenly that for the longest moment he could only stare at the red stain spreading on the glass, half-stunned and half-curious – the professional in him distantly wondering how similar the insides of a bird were to those of a man – until the car behind him began to honk, and he had to find a parking spot to clean up the mess.</p><p>After that, things had gone downhill.</p><p>He was so distracted he almost forgot to turn at a corner because for a second he thought he had seen a woman on a horse’s back disappearing in a one-way street, between two giant Pepsi adds.</p><p>The signs looked foreign to him as he drove on, and he couldn’t stop thinking about how the bird wasn’t a pigeon, but something else, something he’d never seen in the city before. He was almost sure he wasn’t lost, but the light was different, and the buildings felt taller, almost crooked, as if the horizon was closing in on him. There wasn’t much to be said for Philadelphia on a regular day, but he’d never really cared before – his conversation with Diane must have weighted on him more than he had first thought. There was no time to panic about the state of his mind, though: he had a plane to catch.</p><p>He was waiting at a red light, headed for the highway, when a girl crossing the road suddenly stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and turned to look directly at him. At least that’s what he thought she was looking at – his windshield still had a slightly red glow that made it hard to focus on what was going on outside. But her gaze hit him like a blow: there was something so incomprehensibly hateful in it, burning, accusing, and a few minutes later, driving away as fast as he could, he realized he was incapable to tell what the rest of her face had been like.</p><p>He felt sick in his stomach all the way to the airport.</p><p>The plane wasn’t much better – he remembered Diane telling him about losing her mind listening to that one tape Cooper recorded in the middle of a storm on his way to Spokane, “and I <em>knew</em> he was alive and well, since I was listening to the damned tape, but here I was, clutching my desk, livid, convinced he was going to die. And then of course he went on chatting about deer for ten minutes”.</p><p>Neither of them believed in signs, and there was no storm on his flight’s itinerary, but the atmosphere still felt oddly charged, the few passengers unusually quiet. At one point, a cabin crew member had walked to his seat and placed a glass of tomato juice in front of him with an air of finality. He had blinked at it, surprised, and said:</p><p>“Actually, as tempting as a cup of laboratory-grown, genetically fucked-up, watery goo looks, I’d rather have a coffee.”</p><p>Which was good of him, he thought. The woman had lowered her perfectly coiffed hair and smiled with condescension.</p><p>“I’m sorry, no.”</p><p>And with that, she had promptly walked away.</p><p>It was something of a last straw, he believes now, for he normally would have hunted that person down with a ready-made rant on his lips, but instead he stayed seated and found out mid-flight he was absentmindedly sipping the horrifying drink.</p><p>After that, he wants to tell Harry, Twin Peaks had seemed boringly normal to him, and the rage he felt almost invigorating. It was almost as if he was the one bringing bad omens in a quiet little town.</p><p> </p><p>“I didn’t see anything unusual there, no.”</p><p>Harry sighs in relief.</p><p>“Good. Kids around here… Some of those were less than ten when Laura… They grew up in a different place.”</p><p>*</p><p>By the time he had parked his rent car in his hotel’s parking – always on the edge of town, never at the Great Northern, and how many times had Harry tried to offer him the second bedroom of his cabin, how many times had he forced himself to refuse, knowing full well one day he would accept – he was mostly recovered, having reminded himself that most people were jerks, and birds had about two brain cells to their entire specie.</p><p>As he dragged his suitcase toward the neutral building – not a motel, either – he caught sight of a young mother who was herself trying to drag her reluctant child in the direction of the nearby grocery store.</p><p>For inexplicable reasons, the sight of her hand pulling on his wrist, forcefully, repeatedly as he refused to walk, stopped him in his track, and he found he couldn’t look away. Hearing the drawling sound of his suitcase had stopped, the mother looked up – and recoiled in something like panic. When her eyes reached her face, though, the unamed emotion mostly receded just as he told himself she really looked familiar – black hair, pale and tired. Someone involved in the investigation, he had to guess, though he had always been better with names than with faces – one of the many reasons why he was a coroner. There had been pictures in the files, but there was little point in looking at them, especially when Diane kept taking steps back whenever someone dared to open the folders in front of her.</p><p>“Good morning,” he heard himself say uncharacteristically – he’d been caught staring, and something had to be done.</p><p>The young woman shot him a dirty look, grabbed her kid under the arms and all but ran away.</p><p>Well, that was it for his attempts at friendly interaction with the locals, then. He couldn’t even blame her, really. After all, he did look terribly like a cop.</p><p>*</p><p>Not that he will trouble Harry now with his insights on the difficult relationship some residents seem to have with authority figures. The other man is now up and discreetly checking if he’s done with his cup.</p><p>“I have to tell you, I wasn’t entirely speaking the truth when I said I had no new lead. Something came up only a couple of weeks ago. It’s a shot in the dark, but I’d like to show you. Good thing your visit was scheduled like it was.”</p><p>The offer, in itself, is not unexpected: Harry usually tries to make him leave the comfort of the cabin for this or that location connected to Cooper disappearance, in the hope he will notice something he’s himself missed. Though he refuses to see that ring of trees ever again, he wonders now if this isn’t a stealthy attempt to keep him occupied, a well-meaning way to lull him into believing he was actually accomplishing something by coming there every year, when all he was really doing was seeing the sights he was adamant about avoiding, and talking with Harry about – anything, really, or nothing at all. Silence between them has always been fine.</p><p>“Show me? Is that important?”</p><p>“To be honest, I don’t know. It looked like the sort of things only someone who’s FBI would understand, and I didn’t want to call your boss, not when you were going to be here so soon.”</p><p>Albert nods in agreement. If he could choose, he would always prefer seeing whatever potential evidence they occasionally stumble upon on his own, at least at first. On top of everything else, Gordon was a very loud and distracting thinker.</p><p>“The thing is...” Harry hesitates, and Albert gets the impression his suit is being closely assessed for the second time of the day, from his tired tie to his tired but polished shoes. “It’s quite a hike.”</p><p>He shoots him a look that says how strongly he hopes he’s joking.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Harry looks genuinely embarrassed, which in itself should be enough to mollify him if he was anything but a parody of friend. “It’s up in the mountain, there’s really no alternative, unless you can find us those helicopters.”</p><p>It’s hard to tell how much of it secretly amuses him, and how much is authentic compassion. Harry’s face has always been an open book, his eyes so earnest he wonders from time to time how the man can stand to expose himself in such a way without being scorched and tired to the bone at the end of the day. If he wanted to look like this, he would need to stop and nap every quarter of an hour, and probably end up being punched anyway. Albert’s job is to cut people open to expose their secrets, and he doesn’t know what to do with such a surface display.</p><p>On the other hand, he does know the day he’ll get to autopsy Gordon (and that day is a possibility he sometimes dreads and sometimes likes to contemplate), he’ll find his body as empty as those Egyptian sarcophaguses, and a redacted note stating he left his insides in his other suit. Which is probably why he will always choose the light in Harry’s eyes, even if it shakes the very foundations he tries to stand on.</p><p>“I can lend you clothes, if you want. There’s no way you’ll be able to walk for more than a mile dressed like this.”</p><p>Sometimes the irony that life sees fit to throw at him is too strong even for his trained tongue, and he can only nods in defeat, and follow Harry to his room.</p><p> </p><p>In the end, he still puts up a fight, and each item of clothing is the subject of harsh negotiations. This wardrobe’s mirror isn’t more helpful than his own, and what he sees in it is a ridiculous montage, two different Alberts pieced together like a provincial Frankenstein’s monster. He’s lost his jacket and, after loudly complaining to Harry, who’s waiting patiently behind the door as if what was happening inside the room really had a degree of indecency, his tie.</p><p>“If I had less compassion, I would tell you to keep it. You would have less breath to complain on the way up.”</p><p>He catches sight of his smiling face in the mirror and immediately tries to control himself.</p><p>The jeans gave him pause. But they were Harry’s, and there is something too intimate there, too blatantly wrong in trying them on. Abandoning his tie on the nightstand already felt like a forbidden gesture. It will likely be hell to walk in his dress pants, but he’ll survive. The main addition is the shoes – a good thing Harry has an extensive collection of hiking boots. They seem huge and too heavy to him, but it means Harry is hiding behind his own door like a blushing chaperon mainly because Albert is changing shoes and rolling up his shirt’s sleeves. As he reflects on this, wondering how ludicrous they can afford to be, he sees he’s got a new message:</p><p>
  <em>Do you like it there? </em>
</p><p>*</p><p>“I damned hope your ‘shot in the dark’ is something akin to Cooper’s left ear in a nice plastic bag with a phone number attached to it, and that you wouldn’t put me through hell for two triangles painted on a wall and rare specimens of mountain flowers.”</p><p>They’ve been walking for an hour or so, and the slopes are indeed rather steep – which is no reason to let Harry overtaking him in peace.</p><p>“I’d rather Coop had his ears attached, when we find him.”</p><p>He hears the slightest hesitation here, the ‘when’ that really was an ‘if’ not saying its name. There are days he believes he could draw the shape of Cooper’s ears from memory. And others he struggles to remember his face.</p><p>After that they walk in silence for a moment, the scenery drowning in sounds of rustling branches, distant tweeting and his own heart beating in his ears as he tries to remember the last time he actually had to do legwork. With Harry he’s learned to talk a lot less, and he feels it’s slowly growing on him, while the other man seems to have the reversed experience, sharing more every time he visits. He always thought he was a man of many words, ready to give an earful to everyone and everything, but in the light of Harry’s face, apologetic and calm, he’s come to reconsider the taste of some of his best insults. After all, the man is right: there is nothing to say. And he would articulate for hours whose fault this whole mess is, blame the local doctor, the hospital, the passivity of witnesses, accuse all the locals and their fake cheerfulness, even criticize the police force. But it wouldn’t bring Cooper back. So he frowns, cursing the mud on his pants, and gives a death glare to the pines that block the view in front of them, blaming their hopelessness.</p><p>Even if he’s answering only sporadically, Diane hasn’t stopped texting him, and he wonders if she’s alone in her flat on a Saturday morning, thoroughly engrossed in hating him from a distance.</p><p><em>I don’t understand you. It’s been 5 years. He’s not there</em>.</p><p>And, a few minutes later:</p><p>
  <em>Even if he were, he wouldn’t want to be found.</em>
</p><p>That is the one question they never discuss with Gordon, not that there is much discussion to be had with the man.</p><p>Whenever they travel together, he always feels he’s mostly moving rocks around to keep his boss occupied. Silence with Gordon is different than silence with Harry. There’s something more complicit in it, more defeated too because he’s come to understand it’s impossible to truly argue with Cole. With time, Gordon’s hearing has grown so selective he apparently prefers him not to say anything. This too has worked against his natural tendency: Miami, Odessa, Houston, even Crow Agency in Montana, all the places they’ve looked for Cooper have taken the words out of him. And no matter how far they go, he always knows, when he comes back to Twin Peaks, that there is no other town, no other woods.</p><p>Diane can thinks what she wants. Dale is in the trees and the ridiculously dramatic waterfalls, in the beaks of the damned thrushes Harry keeps talking about and who wake him far too early in the morning.</p><p>He really hates nature.</p><p>“We’re not too far from the facility. Hope you’re not having regrets,” Harry says, eyeing the state of his pants and his probably reddish face with amusement.</p><p>Sometimes he wonders if what there is between them isn’t just share mourning, grief that hides behind cups of tea and blankets in front of the fire, if it can be called a friendship in the end. And then Harry does something that reminds him he’s way too cynical and doesn’t even deserve a friend in the first place – like announcing he’s brought donuts but also apples if he’d prefer, and calling a break. Sitting on a large root that looked inviting, he tries hard not to smile at the thermos of tea that appeared out of Harry’s backpack, as he writes to Diane:</p><p>
  <em>Wev gt food and ht drinks the bastard may chang his mind </em>
</p><p>As he passes him the cup, Harry suddenly says, looking embarrassed:</p><p>“So, I know this isn’t how you work, and that’s why I haven’t mentioned it sooner, but I have something else. Again, could be nothing. But we don’t tend to ignore that sort of news here, at least not when it’s related to Cooper.”</p><p>“Are you going to tell me, or will I have to move in and start a chicken farm before I’m worthy of the information?”</p><p>“Alright, but before you say anything, listen to the end. Hawk got a call last week from Carl Rodd, the owner of the Fat Trout Trailer Park. Turns out, Carl had a dream that made a strong impression on him.”</p><p>Albert scoffs, but manages not to comment.</p><p>“He said he saw ‘that man in black’. They were in the middle of a dark forest. There was something about motors and oil, but the details are blurry at best. What matters, I think, is that Carl said when he woke up he was certain of one thing: the man had gone ‘where the trees are taller’”.</p><p>Harry looks at him expectantly, and for a second he’s at loss, not knowing what to say.</p><p>“For fuck’s sake, Harry, you are an agent of the law. I’ve seen my share of the bizarre, but you can’t expect me to go belly dancing all the way to Vegas because some wino had a dream.”</p><p>The other man sighs:</p><p>“I’m not speaking as the sheriff right now. We’re on Bookhouse boys’ duty, here. And I only mention it because that phone call got me up in Blue Pine Mountain in the first place. I found the inscription because Carl said something about it. I hadn’t been there for a while.”</p><p>What can one say to this? He’s always been a skeptic, and that was his role in whatever Gordon was trying to have them do. Diane had been his only ally on that front, right before every other agent with an interest in numerology and syncretic religion had excused themselves from reality. It was a hard plunge to take. On the other hand, if anything had happened to Cooper, it seemed only logical that it involved talking monkeys and paranormal Christmas trees.</p><p>“Well, I suppose I’ll have to let Gordon know. He probably will take us straight to Sequoia Park, and it will be your own fault.”</p><p>But as they resume their walk, he finds he’s actually considering the information. Chet disappeared in Fat Trout Trailer, and half of what he’s learned working with Gordon is getting harder and harder to dismiss as the years go by and the temptation to blame everything on people like Windom Earle weakens.</p><p>In his pocket, his phone lights up to a text that says:</p><p>
  <em>You’ve changed, Rosenfield.</em>
</p><p>*</p><p>Finally, after almost two hours of strenuous hike (by Albert’s standards, at least – Harry seems as fresh as a daisy), they are standing before the remains of what used to be Listening Post Alpha. He’s been here before, of course, but the fire had destroyed almost everything, in a way that was too methodical to be accidental.</p><p>“It’s over there,” Harry points at a small area next to a deformed metallic pole that probably used to be a piece of machinery, and now looms over the ruined landscape ominously.</p><p>As he approaches, he can see nothing but blackened chunks of concrete half-covered in pine needles. There is a huge amount of broken glass on the ground, and it squeals with every step they take, like teeth grinding under too much pressure.</p><p>“Here. Look, that’s the writing.”</p><p>Hidden behind what appears to be burned shutters, there is a group of three dark tree trunks, skeletons of the firs that bordered the facility’s windows. He crouches down slowly, careful not to touch anything. On one of them, engraved in the sooty wood, one can read:</p><p>
  <em>PJ 541182197633</em>
</p><p>Albert pauses, as a surge of vertigo draws him forward.</p><p>It looks like a prank. He had pleaded for years with Gordon, complaining it was hard to work when your theoretical supervisor was virtually unreachable, to no avail. Bribing Diane had similarly been a dead end: according to her, she only got annoying messages on the office’s answering machine, no direct phone call, and they mostly consisted in jokes about the line being haunted and invitations to kick Gordon in the shins. All of this to finally get Phillip Jeffries’s number from a dead tree.</p><p>“It makes no fucking sense,” he eventually manages to say.</p><p>“So this speaks to you? I thought it might. I’m not familiar with Briggs’s codes, but...”</p><p>“I don’t… I don’t even think it’s code. We’ve got an agent who’s gone missing in Argentina and… I may be wrong. Hold on a minute. I need to think.”</p><p>If history has proved anything, it’s that it was safer to stand as far as possible from Blue Rose-related clues. Gesturing to Harry he should step back as well, he walks to the other side of the site and before he can think better of it, gets hold of his phone to write to Diane.</p><p>
  <em>Posible nu lead involvin PJ</em>
</p><p>“We’ve been here before,” he tells Harry. “How comes we never noticed it?”</p><p>“Because I don’t think it was there. I’ve inspected this place after the fire – many people have. Sometimes I even catch sight of Bobby Briggs in those woods – never used to like them, except as a kid I suppose, but I would do the same if I was him.”</p><p>“And you don’t think he could have done it? He’s Briggs’s son, right?”</p><p>“I asked him. Said he never came all the way up here, that it was too difficult. He swore he only went to the spots where he used to play with his dad when he was young.”</p><p>“And the wife?”</p><p>“About the same. And I don’t think they would lie about it: Briggs was always on our side of things, as far as I can understand. They say the numbers meant nothing to them.”</p><p>Albert refrains to point out how naive it is to believe there is a “side of things” in this mess. Instead, in an unusual gesture, he puts a protective hand on Harry’s arm.</p><p>“Alright, stay right where you are. Do you have a piece of paper?”</p><p>Harry doesn’t, but he does have a pen, and if he’s being honest, vanishing into thin air because you’ve written down an Argentinian number on your wrist after a bucolic hike with a friend doesn’t even sound like a bad way to go. If only he wasn’t wearing those shoes.</p><p>“Not to drown you in optimism, but if you see anything strange, you run down that hill as if it was on fire and I was a barrel of oil, are we clear?”</p><p>He can hear Harry claiming his indignation in his back, something about being the local sheriff and moral responsibility, but at least he’s staying put. Working with Cooper may have taught him a thing or two after all. As quickly as he can, trying to keep his mind blank, he copies the numbers down, omitting the last digit on a whim: there’s being a rationalist at heart, and there’s working with Gordon for fifteen years. When he’s done, he jogs back to Harry and all but pushes him in the direction of the path they took earlier.</p><p>“Let’s get out of here. Two morons alone in the woods suddenly coming upon something suspicious is too rehashed a picture, you know what I mean?”</p><p>*</p><p>Their walk back is evidently an easier one, but his mind is occupied by the numbers on his hand, as they discuss what finding them in that particular place could mean. Neither or them is convinced he should try to call, but the thought of simply reporting it to Gordon without taking any course of action tastes like the worst kind of desertion.</p><p>The truth is, he can’t believe they’ve actually found anything. And maybe they haven’t. Deep down, some part of him always thought roaming the country in the less than enviable role of Gordon’s lackey was mostly a way to <em>be</em> with Gordon, to mark the fact they were both still there, twisting and turning to let the void know they certainly were really Federal agents, and not two clowns and a search warrant in a large trench coat. What scares him, as much as the impulse to ask Harry’s any question about fish stuffing, is how much he wants to believe this will be the key to their quest, when every evidence and the experience of the last five years suggest this inscription is at best a useless graffiti and at worst his ticket to Nowhereland.</p><p>He’s in the middle of contemplating the merits of wiping the damned thing inside his pocket discreetly when he hears:</p><p>“I think your phone is doing a thing.”</p><p>At some point in his existential crisis, he’s forgotten his pocket was already occupied, the cell’s screen more luminous that a lighthouse in the night. He takes it out and quickly panics when he sees he has 14 missed calls. But the sinking feeling in his stomach is only confirmed when he gets to the unread messages.</p><p>
  <em>What??</em>
</p><p>
  <em>What lead</em>
</p><p>
  <em>What abt Jeffries?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Albert what are you doing</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Stay where you are. Stay exactly where you are. I’m calling you</em>
</p><p>
  <em>For fuck’s sake, answer the fucking phone</em>
</p><p>
  <em>How can you do this</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I hate you</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Albert</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Please</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Please stay put</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Please</em>
</p><p>Diane never pleads. This is a defining trait, as deeply ingrained as the inability to express sadness over Cooper or to go on fourth dates with anyone. And he’s a massive moron. As he reaches this inevitable conclusion, the phone lights up again to an entering call.</p><p>“I’m sorry, signal was too weak, it’s those fucking woods, I’m sorry...”</p><p>The voice that cuts him off is hoarse and raw, as if it had screamed for a while.</p><p>“Are you there? Are you still there?”</p><p>“Yes, yes I just… I didn’t do anything, okay? We found this number written on a tree, and it looked just like an Argentinian number, and it wasn’t here before but I wasn’t going to...”</p><p>“You won’t! Promise me you won’t do anything with it! You insist to go there, and then you… you...”</p><p>He’s never heard her sound so panicked, and it’s getting to him too, the nauseous feeling from his drive through the city resuscitated by her labored breathing. There’s a pause during which it’s all he can hear.</p><p>Eventually, she says:</p><p>“Tell me what you see.”</p><p>It’s an order if there ever was one, but he still hesitates.</p><p>“Are you…”</p><p>“Dammit, Albert, tell me! I need you to tell me...anything, what you see, what you feel about the fucking grandeur of nature or whatever is so special about this place you all seem to make a break for it like fucking greyhounds, <em>anything</em>!”</p><p>He thinks she’s crying now, so he helplessly looks around, only catching sight of Harry’s puzzled face.</p><p>“It’s… I, erm, so, lots of trees, yeah, I mean you already know that, but those trees, they are… I’d say the color of a pack of SnackWell’s you see, that same shade of green, and there really are far too many birds around here, trust me, you can barely hear yourself think...”</p><p>If there was any lingering doubt about his poetic abilities, they’ve just been shattered, although one could try to save his soul by pointing out a similarity in style with the likes of Frank O’Hara. Still, Diane isn’t mollified:</p><p>“What else? Tell me.”</p><p>He doesn’t know what to do with a crying Diane. No one should ever have to figure that one out. So he improvises.</p><p>“I don’t know, there are moments when they grow so thick it gets very dark, even like now when it’s sunny, but, but where I am right now it’s more like an army of harmless parasols or something, and the ground is steep and it’s impossible to climb, I’m wearing damned hiking boots and what used to be a pressed shirt, if you could see me you would know there’s nothing to worry about, I look like an accountant in an 18<sup>th</sup> century German painting, and really, really...”</p><p>“I hate him,” she says suddenly, and he’s almost relieved that he doesn’t have to go on and describe the pebbles like an uninspired comedian on an open mic night.</p><p>“He knew, he knew how it went with this town – you <em>told</em> him, back then, you tried to… Damned it, I tried too, with his ridiculous idea of getting a house there, I can’t even...”</p><p>She tries to catch her breath, and when she finally manages it her tone has become much softer, more like the Diane he knows from bars, the Diane of too many Martinis and not enough sleep, whose good heart transpires almost against her will:</p><p>“It’s only you and me now, you know that. Just you and me, and you always go alone, and I...”</p><p>It’s true he’s never offered. And he’s never admitted he shouldn’t go back to Twin Peaks either. Years of tapes have made Diane impervious to bullshit, so he doesn’t even try. While he may have changed, like she said, she hasn’t, and he needs her in his life just as much as the warmth in his chest tells him he needs the carefulness in Harry’s eyes. But lately he had to wonder if she wasn’t the one getting frustrated with herself, just like he always used to be. For his part, he may have a chance of growing out of it, with her raised eyebrows on one side and Harry’s encouragements on the other, shielding him from his old habits and keeping him afloat. Having two friends seems like a privilege as much as a beautiful equation these days, even if you’re counting the ghosts. But how many friends does Diane have?</p><p>“You would hate it here. Besides, what would we do without you in the office to remind us the king’s naked? Gordon would be insufferable.”</p><p>A long, tired sigh at the other end of the line. She’s thinking about quitting, he suspects. Too many drinks, and he knows her far too well.</p><p>“I’m tired of this. I just miss him.”</p><p>This alone should alarm him, and it does, because they never say those things. They are simply a given, the damned melancholic pine trees in the background of their lives, the cartons obviously fake and the colors all wrong, because Cooper always liked to indulge in manufactured authenticity. But what really catches him unaware is when she immediately asks:</p><p>“Is he with you?”</p><p>Of course Cooper isn’t with him. Cooper is gone. Cooper will probably never come back. Cooper, whom they all miss, the late, wonderful Dale Cooper, Cooper whose ears he can draw and whose smile will forever burn in his mind, whose voice haunts Diane at night, Cooper and his fucking mantras, Cooper…</p><p>“Albert, is he with you? The cowboy?”</p><p>He’s an idiot.</p><p>“Harry,” he only says, turning around to locate the other man who’s walked away to give him some privacy.</p><p>Diane sighs again, but this time it’s more frustrated than desperate.</p><p>“Yes, Harry, your secret lover, whatever you want to call him. He’s here, right?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“I want to speak to him.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“You heard me, give him the goddamn phone.”</p><p>Helplessly, he gestures to Harry to come nearer, and hands him the device hesitantly:</p><p>“Diane, for you.”</p><p>Even he can feels this sentence makes no sense, and accordingly, Harry wouldn’t have looked at him differently if he had announced Santa Claus was on line and willing to congratulate him for being such a good boy.</p><p>“Diane,” he whispers, a bit awed. “<em>The</em> Diane? Really?”</p><p>“No, my mistake, it’s Diana Ross, she wants to know if you’re really done with your singing career, because she’s considering a duet. For God’s sake, as far as I know you’re probably in for a complete dressing down on federal budget, so try not to look so happy about it.”</p><p>Still, Harry’s smiling like a child when he answers:</p><p>“Harry Truman speaking. I must say it’s an honor.”</p><p>Albert thinks he can hear Diane roll her eyes all the way from Philly, but if anyone can pull off that sort of things, it’s Harry and his devastating honesty.</p><p>“Yes… yes, he’s right here,” Harry frowns, turning to him. “Of course. Well, it’s been five years. Oh. No, I understand. I don’t think… I’d be glad. If that’s okay with him. I admit I’m curious too.”</p><p>He walks around as he talks, and Albert doesn’t dare to follow him to eavesdrop.</p><p>The conversation lasts for about five minutes, and he sees Harry asking a few questions, but mostly he’s the one listening. When he finally hangs up, he can barely contain his curiosity.</p><p>“So?”</p><p>Harry’s smile has turned a bit sad, he thinks.</p><p>“She sounds like an interesting person, for sure.”</p><p>One has to wonder how many expletives and threats Diane managed to use during those five minutes.</p><p>“And she asked… she asked if I would consider visiting you in Philadelphia. According to her, and I quote, ‘in long distance relationships you have to share the costs’.”</p><p>He feels himself pale, while Harry openly laughs at him:</p><p>“It’s fine, I’m sure she meant well, and she’s right, I can’t always ask you to come here.”</p><p>He hopes Diane will repay him in vast quantities of whiskey. He may die of embarrassment, on his own behalf and on Harry’s as well.</p><p>“And I think I will,” Harry adds, running his hand though his hair as if unsure of himself. “If you want me to, that is. I’m sure… I’m sure there are things we can look at in the archives you’ve compiled, too.”</p><p>There probably isn’t a single useful information in the documents he has managed to gather: he always assumed that whatever Gordon let him keep must be meaningless. But that’s not what’s at stake here, and they both know it. Finding Harry’s eyes, he holds his gaze and says in a deliberate tone:</p><p>“Okay. Good.”</p><p> </p><p>Not an hour later, he realizes with all their exploits he’s managed to tear his pants in the worst possible place. No matter how tragic his own experience, it goes to prove his part in this investigation will always be deflated by unwanted comedy. Harry being Harry, he denies having noticed anything, cheekily pointing out he’s mostly walked ahead of him. It’s like just the tea, like standing behind a closed door while he isn’t undressing, like Harry ignoring how pitiful he can be, talking about leads and files instead of jazz and fishing. He will have to thank Diane, once they’re both back at the cabin. For a fleeting moment, he wonders where she is, what she’s doing, now that she’s stopped texting.</p><p>But then Harry turns back to smile at him, stating he will have to wear those jeans after all, and his mind is back in Twin Peaks, just for the time being, just for a little while, as in the deep of the woods the wind begins to rise.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'll admit texting at that time was probably a lot harder than what I describe here - it was the really beginning but hey, Diane's a modern gal if there ever was one.<br/>The whole phone number idea is a variation on how Albert could have contacted Jeffries. I wanted to write something warm for him, but at this point we're also left to wonder how he will manage to ruin everything since in s3 he's basically lost both Diane and Harry (maybe not the latter though, there's still hope and I will go on believing).</p></blockquote></div></div>
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